Adventures of an Aviatrix, in which a pilot travels the skies and the treacherous career path of Canadian commercial aviation, gaining knowledge and experience without losing her step, her licence, or her sense of humour.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What to Do

It's another poor day for our work, but there's a high approaching and we're holding out help for good weather tomorrow. Today looks like a good shopping and looking around town day. We're in a hotel on the main street and only a couple of kilometres from the centre of town. I wonder what's here.

You can tell you're in a fun times kind of town when you go to the web to find out what the town offers and you find three three trucking companies, all listed under the category Attractions touristiques. Trucking isn't my idea of a good time, so we go out to look at the town the old fashioned way. There's a pharmacy, a couple of gas stations, a stationery store, the dollar store, a little department store and a couple of banks. The drugstore has a logo showing it to be part of a national chain, but the chain logo is less prominent than the name of the local druggist, and the only other chains in town are 7-11 and the grocery store. Stores are named and sales advertised in French or English, I supposed according to the whim of the proprietor. Everyone seems to speak both languages comfortably and conversations around me slide back and forth. It's a stereotype of Canada: a remote town with a mixed resource and agricultural base, comfortably intermingled French and English and native and non-native populations, and winter coming on any day now. You just know there's going to be a moose and a beaver around the next bend.

I bought some postcards and some groceries and headed back to the hotel.